As an administrator, you can create a center-wide Menu and add the meals weeks or months in advance. You can also decide if you’d like to share this Calendar with parents or not. It's the ideal tool for managing the meal plan of your center!
As a general rule of thumb, menus are indefinite in HiMama. This means that if you create a new menu, it should be reflective of a certain dietary restriction or age group not because of the season or month.
Menus should be continuous. This means every time a new "seasonal" menu is sent to you by your catering company or is created by your kitchen staff, you'll come back to the Menu's page and continue from where you left off, not create a new one. For example, as a center you may have a:
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Vegetarian Menu: features vegetarian friendly meals that the educators use for children who are on this meal plan
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Infant Menu: features more infant friendly soft foods
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Menu: features all other meals in your center. Ie. children who are not using a specialized meal plan.
Follow the steps below to create a new Menu.
#1: Click on 'Menus & Calendars'.
#2: Click on the 'New Calendar or Menu' green button at the top right.
#3: Select 'Menu' as the type.
#4: Enter a name for this Calendar.
#5: Check the box if you'd like to share this Calendar with parents.
#6: Click on 'Create' to save it.
Once you create a Menu, you'll be redirected to the monthly Calendar view. From this page, you can:
#1: Select if you'd like to see the meal details or not. If the box is unchecked, you'll only see the meal types (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner). The default option is checked.
#2: Navigate between weeks/months (depending of your view) by clicking on the blue arrows;
#3: Switch between Menus and center/classrooms Calendars by clicking on the grey drop-down below the month;
#4: Change to a weekly view by clicking on the 'View weekly' link below the drop-down;
#5: Add new meals by clicking on the plus sign or edit existing ones by clicking on the date or meal title.
Now let's add a meal! You simply need to click on the plus sign on the day you'd like to add the meal and fill the details.
After the meal was saved, you can:
#1: Click on 'Add Meal' again to add other entries;
#2: Click on 'Next Day' to continue adding the meals for the following day;
#3: Click on 'Back to Calendar' to be redirected to the monthly view of the Menu.
Below you can see how the teacher and parent/guardian will see the event from their account:
Things to note
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The center can have a total of 6 Calendars (Menus included). If you see an error message when creating a new Menu, please delete unused Menus or Calendars and try again.
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Menus are always visible to teachers but they cannot edit it.
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If the Menu is visible to parents, you can still hide a specific entry by not checking the 'Make this visible to parents' box when creating or editing the meal.
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If the center-wide Calendar is not visible to parents, all entries will be hidden from parents by default.
Comments
10 comments
I have added the menu granted parent access, but the parents do not see it in their calendars along with the activities. Is this a bug or I am not doing something right? We usually send email with the weekly menu, but thought it would be useful to publish through HiMama instead. Thanks!
Hi The Beehive Daycare! Menus and activities are visible for parents in app and on a web browser. You can have the parents reach out to support@himama.com if they're not able to find them and our team will help them out!
Is there a way for the teachers to access (view) the menu? I can see the whole month’s menu in my administrative account, my parents can see it, but when I’m logged into my room (teacher) account I’m unable to get to it.
My educators often cover children to accommodate ratio or transition periods. In order to allow them to update the children who float into and out of their room or those children we are working on transitioning I have to have the box checked that they all have access to all rooms. If this box is checked then the Cook does not have access to inputting her menu unless she has full access to the administrator account. I can't be the only director that doesn't have the time to input menu's and would prefer if my cook has a way to do this that didn't mess up the educators access to all the children in the Centre.
It says up above that parents can only see if on the web and not in the app. Can you please verify because we have parents saying they can't see our menu.
Parent Visibility. *Note: Parents will only be able to see this if they login through a web browser.
Hi Heder's House,
Teachers can now see menus from their classroom calendar if the classroom accessibility is disabled
Hi Melfort Day Care Co-op Site 2,
Thank you for providing this feedback! I will pass this along to our product team!
Hi Happy Hall Preschool,
Parents can see the menus as long as the menus are set up to be visible to parents as well as the individual meal entries- there is a check box for each meal entered. I hope this helps! :)
If I have the menu set up on the calendar and it is made visible to the parents, do the staff also have add the menus each day or would this be a duplicate?
Hi Tracy Peterson!
Once a Menu has been created, staff can add it's meal information to a child's Daily Report by starting a Food entry from the Add Entry page. Enter the Meal type, and then select "Import from Menu". This will allow them to pull the information you have already created in your Menu.
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